Crisis

Been a while!

Ok we talked about the family under stress this week.
Now Crisis demands a change in the family system, sometimes good and sometimes bad. Some examples of crisis are

-Death
-Infidelity
-Illness
-Divorce

Death would be tough no matter who it is in the family that died but there is a difference in morning and feeling depending on if it was a parent, child, aunt, uncle, grandparent etc. that died. The difficulty and reaction also depends on the age you are, if the death was expected of unexpected, and/or how closes you are with the person

Infidelity is difficult because, besides the obvious one parent pulling away and becoming distant from the family, often one parent stops being a parent so often one of the older children has to take on the role and take care of the other children. The roles sort of switch.

Illness of a parent can also cause a change in roles where one of the older children must take on the role of parent in the house. It can also change the social interactions the family has with the outside world, especially if the children are younger then 16 and can not drive.

Divorce is very difficult and changes the entire dynamic of the entire family. The children may have to take on parental roles and the parents may even end up in competition for the children's love by doing things such as buying them toys, lapsing on rule, and bad mouthing the other parental unit.

My teacher gave us the ABCX model that he learned from somewhere that I forgot. It goes like this
A-actual event
B-both recources and application
C- cognitions (thought process)
_________________________
X-total eXpirience

Pretty self explanatory I would say. The way you handle ABC makes up what X is. Like a math problem . . . but better in my opinion because you can choose what X is . . . and I don't like math.

A stresser is anything that brings stress, good or bad and it has been said that without stress we tend to become weak.

Abuse is another stresser and crisis.
There are a few different kinds of abuse
-emotional abuse
-sexual abuse
-physical abuse
-verbal abuse

When abuse occurs within the family there is often fear, the family closes off, the needs of family members can not be met, and the abuser is normally well liked and respected within the community while at home they cause fear and hurt.

We talked mostly about sexual abuse in class. The treatment we talked about can be seen by some as cruel but has been tested and tends to have better results then just taking the sexual offender out of the house.
1. all of the family members are brought together.
    -ask mom and dad what they know
             *This gets everything out in the open
             *There are times when the victim can not express themselves or tell what happened.
             *It gives mom and dad power and puts them, once again, in charge of the situation
2. Ask everyone else in the family what they know
     -Mom and dad cant do their job if they don't know the whole story
     -sometimes others were abused other then the original victim
3. Talk to the offender
     -Ask why what they did was wrong
     -Keep probing
            *It helps to teach the effects of abuse to the offender, its like self discovery
            *ask the family why they think it is wrong, make sure they all agree.
            *at the end agree with what they said and then add that it hurts their spirit.
              (remember sexuality and spirituality are connecter, it causes pain to the spirit of the victim)
4.Other family members begin talking about how their spirits were also hurt.
    -begins opening things up between family members
    -opens true learning by self discovery and the spirit
    -reinforces natural boundaries
5.specifically points out how it hurt the spirit of parents
6.Tell the offender to get down on his knees and apologize (a very important step)
    -ask the victim if they believed the apology
            *if not have them apologize again until the whole family believes they are truly sorry
 Note: the entire family will become closer and may all apologize for their part in the entire situation.

By doing this and slowly integrating them saftly back into the family while teaching them the correct behavior of a sibling or parent and not leaving them alone with the victim. This replaces a bad behavior with a good one which sticks with the person longer then just therapy. This method often gets the offender saftely back into the family while other methods the offender becomes a repeat offender or never becomes integrated back into the family.

Just a few crisis and I found it interesting. The only real crisis my family has been through is having to move a few times and the death of my uncle, but we've had a rather good and crisis free life. Maybe a few smaller ones but nothing big. Its interesting to learn about those who have been through really difficult family crisis and hopefully learn how to understand and help people.  
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